Hacker News Reader

Comment by judah | Hacker News Reader

This is definitely one of those moral fashions [1] that Paul Graham wrote about:

"What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed."

Society has shifted on this issue, such that the traditional is considered unacceptable to hold; you're ostracized with negative labels should you hold the unfashionable position. This is precisely what TeamRarebit is doing to Brendan Eich: ostracizing him for his moral stance, one that has fallen out of fashion.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

View on HN

"Society has shifted on this issue, such that the traditional is considered unacceptable to hold; you're ostracized with negative labels should you hold the unfashionable position..."

Couldn't you say the same thing about civil rights? Slavery? Colonization? At some point these ideas were considered 'OK' by society and then at some point they were considered 'Not OK'. Are these simply 'fashions' to you? I think PG's article is interesting and very relevant, but taking it and naming something a 'fashion' without studying it in the same depth as the article isn't pushing the argument forward at all.

Yes, they are fashions. Some of them may be good, some may be bad, but they are fashions. It is conceivable that if we find a planet with alien life, there will be calls for colonizaton, for instance. And it could be a good thing.

Let's play an intellectual game. Is it possible to imagine a sensible reason for Eich to hold the view he and others hold? If you are unable to imagine such a reason, it is because you are misunderstanding that position.

The Principle of Charity [1] says you should assume your ideological opponents' beliefs must make sense from their perspective. If you can’t even conceive of a position you oppose being tempting to someone, you don’t understand it and are probably missing something. You might be missing a strong argument that the position is correct. Or you might just be missing something totally out of left field.

I propose most people in this thread -- and indeed in the San Francisco-based startup culture -- do not understand the position Eich holds. And it does not hold to the Principle of Charity, choosing instead to ostracize and boycott and demonize with ugly labels.

Perhaps a fair way to approach this debate would be, "Assuming Eich does not hate gay people, why would he be opposed to redefining marriage?"

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

>Let's play an intellectual game. Is it possible to imagine a sensible reason for Eich to hold the view he and others hold? If you are unable to imagine such a reason, it is because you are misunderstanding that position.

Why is it that we have to imagine their reasons, when they cannot bother to imagine our reasons?

*I can actually "imagine" some of their reasons, my dad is a rabid fundamentalist and is very anti-gay, I just don't propose they are valid reasons.

We must be willing to consider another's position even if we perceive their unwillingness to consider ours. To do otherwise is a recipe for ignorance and stalemate.

Do we really think Eich hates all gay people? Do we really think his position is as simple as, "Well, I irrationally hate all gay people, therefore, I voted for Prop 8"?

I propose to you that Eich holds his position for reasons that are sensible to him, and not because he hates all gay people. If we are unable to afford him even that charity, we may in fact be more close-minded than our opponents.

Well, unfortunately actions speak louder than words. I have friends that swear up and down they aren't racist, but they judge people all the time based on color and often use terminology that isn't acceptable. Sometimes we have to reject people's claims and judge their arguments based on our own gut feelings and experiences. Reason cannot survive in a dishonest environment.

You do realize that you're going against what you just described as "moral fashion". Brave or suicidal? My advice: when going against current, use a throw away account, like me. Even when describing this, people are still thinking you're taking a stance :) humanity at its worse. Stupidity at its best.

As Paul Graham wisely pointed out, when the Inquisition demands to know, "Are you with us or against us?", it is safe to say, "Neither."

You might be surprised at just how little I care that there is some "logical" reason that preventing me from marrying whomever I love is worth $1000 to Brendan Eich.

Why does it matter what Eich believes?

If someone wants to take away my rights, it's not my duty to psychoanalyse them.

There are moral fashions. But this isn't one of them, because it's far from arbitrary. We aren't going to have some sort of sudden fashion back the other way, where people are suddenly against interracial marriage, or against black people voting, or against women voting.

They also aren't shunning him for his views. They're shunning him for his actions. He tried to hurt them; it is not unreasonable of them to refuse to support him or the organization he runs.

Discrimination on the basis of political stance is bigotry. There is no two ways about this.

Political stance is one thing, but he then specifically took action to ruin their lives. They're not acting based on against what his stance is, but on the actions he specifically took that personally and demonstrably hurt them.

Discrimination of what kind? They are not publishing an app in an app store. Are they discriminating against Mozilla? Are they blocking Mozilla browsers from their site? Are people being persecuted, imprisoned, or killed for using Firefox? Are they working to put Eich in an internment camp based on his beliefs?

The word "bigotry" is a very big stick to swing against two people who could be killed in many parts of the world based on who they are. Bigotry implies a more systemic persecution than the economic decision they've made here.

By way of comparison, I'm not "discriminating" against Sony based on my boycott of their products for pushing out rootkits to their customers.

They are actively working to disenfranchise Brendan Eich of his employment. They are doing this on the basis of his political stance. This is bigotry. They are bigots. What's worse, they're hypocritical bigots, because they're trying to pass this off as some sort of anti-bigotry stance.

All social justice is like this. It breaks down under the merest of scrutinty.

That's a very reductionist point of view that doesn't seem useful as an intellectual tool.

Bigotry is not just a description of actions people take but the context in which they take them. Eich, in the context of this specific economic transaction, doesn't belong to a marginalized group. These men who are withdrawing their app do. Eich has taken direct action against them and they are responding. In this case, I believe they could be considered to be defending themselves by trying to deprive people who want to do them harm economic opportunity. I'm pretty much okay with that.

So, yeah, I guess you could say they are bigots. But that train of thought doesn't seem to me to place this situation in any useful context other than "all social justice causes are bad". Am I missing something?

I believe Eich has and will continue to have his franchise. Voting, you see, being one of the civil rights guaranteed to us. Like marriage, it turns out.

Being a fancy CEO, though? That's not a civil right. Especially not if attempting to deprive gay people of their civil rights makes it hard to perform an important function of that fancy CEO job: the recruitment and retention of staff.

> They are doing this on the basis of his political stance.

They are doing this because he directly funded initiatives that withhold equal rights from them and treat them as less than human. You can hold views, even as CEOs, I don't agree with. Hell, you could donate to the anti-funds of almost anything I believe, as long as it is an equal battlefield. But civil rights aren't about ideology, they are literally whether or not you recognize other humans as being humans and deserving the same rights as you.

Huh. White power is a political stance. One widely reviled. So is antisemitism. So if I understand you rightly, you're basically saying that everybody is a bigot on a variety of formerly-controversial issues.

I guess if you want to define the word that way, sure. In which case, I'm proud to be bigoted against racists. But I think words are more useful when they don't include 99% of the population.

Every social justice warrior is a bigot by definition.

Thankfully, your kind is a very tiny percentage of the population.

I guess 87% of the population is pretty tiny in your world: http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-wh...

Also, I think it's awesome I get to qualify as a warrior by sitting in a cafe and pointing out basic legal facts to people. Pew pew! I'm a warrior! 'Scuse me while I go beat my chest and shop for bandoliers.

Uh, no. Political views are - presumably - matters of choice. Also, they're prone to regular change. In both regards, they are categorically different from distinctions of gender, race, orientation, etc.

Getting a sex change operation is a matter of choice, too.

Regular change. Can you not read?

When his "moral stance" directly affects your own quality of life and standing as a US citizen then it's probably more than just fashion, hm?

Well no, he has the exact same rights as any other citizen to vote and donate for whatever laws he prefers.

It's inappropriate to do various things that hurt people around you; but it's perfectly fine to vote and support laws that directly affect quality of life of people in both directions (surprise - pretty much all laws/propositions do!).

It's exactly the same as boycotting a company because CEO belongs to a really opposite political party - USA doesn't have any really opposite parties; but the rest of the world has seen quite a lot of such partisanism, and it ends up just as ugly as any other bigotry.

I think you missed the part where one husband in this couple was granted a green card due to marital status, and was able to immigrate to the US.

So there would be no or little recourse, much less voting.

Wow, understatement of the decade. Is that also true of the folks who wouldn't leave Woolworth's lunch counters a few decades back? I don't know how you, personally, feel on this issue, but designating people who love each other as second-class citizens isn't a mere fassion. It's a fucking atrocity, no less.

Point out that it is a fashion isn't to undermine the weight of the issue.

Rather, to call this issue a moral fashion rightly describes its fluctuation over the course of human history. If we are honest, tolerance of homosexuality to varying degrees has fluctuated as much as the age of consent. Greece once tolerated homosexuality, especially when practiced through pederasty, for instance. And that culture likewise thought it was the most advanced society ever to have existed, and, like many in this thread, could never imagine society moving in the opposite direction.

Eich has the misfortune of taking the side that has grown to be labeled heresy, and he is being ostracized for it. This is exactly the sort of idea Paul Graham spoke about in his modern heresies essay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com